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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

I rarely win any contests, but it's fun to enter and hope. We need a better piano and so I'd enter any contests, but I hang about in mom circles, so I hear about contests for baby and kid gear, not pianos. Anyone ever hear of any?

The Philadelphia Orchestra ran a raffle for a piano back when the Kimmel Center opened a few years ago. You could try looking on orchestra sites--they seem to be the most likely to have a raffle for a piano.

Here you go. He has this contest every few months. It is completely on the level.....no tricks and nothing to buy or pay to enter. He simply uses it as a method of international advertising, as people come to the site to vote for the winners:

We are going to be giving a new Kawai upright or grand as a raffle prize to a local teacher/tech at a future piano learning symposium in Palo Alto. All local teachers in the Mid peninsula will be invited to attend and get a chance to win (Zero cost on piano). This will happen in March 2013.

Fred Carnes upon retirement gave the City of Palo Alto - Art and community center a Kawai concert grand.

Yes... it does happen. Call your local dealer and see if they do things like this.

I know some other Hailun dealers participated in a similar program last Fall. Before that, we participated in a similar giveaway about 10 years ago with a different manufacturer. Overall, it is quite rare to give away something as big and specific as a piano.

I was given the sad news today that I can spend a lot of money to slow down the death of my van or spend a lot of money buying a different vehicle. I think I'll be more serious about entering these piano contests. If it's not one thing, it's another and I think maybe we'll never get that decent piano.

Sorry to hear that, Christine. But you do already have a piano now to use. Alas, priorities!

It's actually a borrowed piano. The guy who lent it isn't very well off when it comes to money and would like to sell his piano to help himself out, but he also knows that selling the piano means my son has nothing to play on. It's hard.

Of course, there's always the worry that 'you get what you pay for' and if it's free...

Still, if something playable can be had in exchange for some heavy lifting and borrowing a pickup truck, it may be worth the effort to move and then put some tech dollars into. Just proceed with a little bit of caution!

Sorry to hear the news about your van, especially since you were planning and saving for a new piano. I don't know of any contests, but there are caring piano teachers that will find people willing to donate or loan a decent piano to their students that just can't afford to buy one. Piano technicians also know people that have decent pianos, which aren't played and need a good home.

Check out your local newspapers, kijiji and craigslist. The first time I started piano (11 years ago) my piano teacher knew someone whom was getting rid of her piano simply because of space. So I got a free piano, just the cost of moving it. It was over 100 years old and the most beautiful piano Id seen!! I couldnt have asked for a better piano. I did sell it several years ago to a fellow who was starting a piano museum and offered me $1000 for it.

I regularly check kijiji in my city and there is usually 3< pianos for free at a time. Mind you some are quite scratched up, but really who cares as long as it plays well right? If I had the space, and didnt live in an apartment, Id take one!

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Dont go to a hardware store looking for a loaf of bread

If you know how to play a piano then you must know what reasonable piano sounds like ? Why not shop around the used piano market: they are by no means all duds.

I live in a smaller area and my husband refuses to help move pianos, which means that if I buy one (or get one for free), I still have to pay the piano movers. An out of town piano costs even more. I help out a piano technician and have learned a bit about pianos and what to look at on the inside. (I have also taken pictures to send to my tech to look at for me.) I've gone to check out several in town that were offered for very cheap, but they've all been duds. (The last was an 1850s Emerson that needed a new pin block, new pins, new strings, new straps, new felts, new hammers, a few pieces of the action rebuilt, and the soundboard cracks fixed.) My tech friend tells me that my son needs a piano with 1.5 repetitions, which seems to be a little harder to find cheap. He is on the lookout for me for a good piano that he can fix for me for a bargain, but he hasn't found one yet.

For those who cannot afford it, no matter how much they save, this comes across as highly cynical and even a bit snobbish..

that's a good point. but then, folk who can't afford it (no matter how hard they try to save) probably shouldn't waste their time dreaming about winning a sparkly new piana either.

I'd like to be the King of Sweden, myself, but I console myself by lording it over the kiddies and wearing ermine pyjamas.

Why is it that someone who cannot afford a piano cannot win a competition? There are several examples in this thread of competitions that give pianos as prizes. Is it merely that people of a certain economic class should be the only ones capable of winning these competitions? Or is that an entirely separate interpretation from what you actually meant?

Also, is it the correct answer when that child who cannot afford a piano could be the next Liszt, Chopin, or Mozart? At some point, is it possible that the high cost of entry prohibits truly diverse new talent, and that that prohibition has led to the slow dwindling of the size of audience of the genre?

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Every day we are afforded a new chance. The problem with life is not that you run out of chances. In the end, what you run out of are days.